The first time I hauled out in France I read the tariff sheet wrong, agreed a price that sounded reasonable, and got a bill nearly double what I expected. The headline number was per square metre per month. The lift, the chocks, the pressure wash, the relaunch and the antifoul were all extra. Nobody hid it. I just did not know how French yards price, and that is the gap this article fills.
If you are weighing a winter ashore against leaving the boat afloat, the cost is only half the decision, but it is the half people get wrong most often.
How the yards price storage ashore
French boatyards almost never quote a single all-in winter figure. They build the bill from separate lines, and you need to add them up yourself before you sign. The structure is consistent across the country even when the numbers are not.
The storage itself is usually charged by surface area (length times beam) per month, in one of two bands:
- open-air hardstanding: in the region of 3.70 euros per square metre per month including VAT at a representative Atlantic yard
- covered storage (under a roof or in a shed): around 5.00 euros per square metre per month including VAT
Run that for a 12-metre boat with a 3.8-metre beam. That is about 45 square metres. Open air at 3.70 euros works out near 167 euros a month, so a six-month winter from October to April lands around 1,000 euros for the standing alone. Covered storage on the same boat pushes past 1,300 euros for the season. Those are real 2025-2026 figures from a French yard tariff, and they are the floor, not the total.
The costs that get added on top
Here is where my first French haul-out went sideways. On top of the monthly storage, expect:
- lift out and launch (sortie d'eau and mise a l'eau): roughly 35 to 120 euros per operation depending on tonnage and the yard. Some yards charge each leg, some bundle the round trip.
- cradle, chocks or a dedicated stand if your boat needs one
- pressure wash of the hull on lift-out, often a separate line
- labour for anything you cannot or will not do yourself, commonly around 60 euros an hour including VAT
A few French ports and dry-port operators run all-inclusive packages with a set number of, or unlimited, handling movements built into the annual fee. Port a sec operators like the Port Adhoc chain price this way: an 8-metre boat stored dry runs around 3,052 euros a year at Paimpol in Brittany, 3,080 at Leucate on the Med, or 2,863 at Soubise on the Atlantic, with handling included. That model is worth comparing against a pay-per-line yard if you launch and recover often.
A worked winter budget
For a 12-metre cruising boat ashore on hardstanding, October to April, doing my own antifoul, my real numbers come out roughly:
- storage, six months open air: about 1,000 euros
- lift out and relaunch: 150 to 240 euros
- pressure wash: 60 to 100 euros
- antifoul paint and rollers (DIY): 250 to 400 euros depending on the paint
- new anodes: 60 to 120 euros
That is a working winter ashore for somewhere between 1,500 and 1,900 euros, before any repair work. If you hand the antifoul to the yard, add several hours of labour at around 60 euros and the figure climbs by 200 to 400 euros. The annual antifoul-and-anodes routine is exactly why most owners haul out yearly rather than every second year, and I cover the wider annual picture in the breakdown of annual running costs of a boat kept in France.
Open air or under cover?
The covered-storage premium is real, and for most fibreglass cruising boats I think it is wasted money. A well-prepared hull survives a French winter outdoors without complaint. Where covered storage earns its keep is for varnished classics, wooden boats, or anything where UV and frost on brightwork genuinely matters. For a standard production sloop, pay the open-air rate and spend the difference on better antifoul.
The exception is the Atlantic and Channel coasts, where wind-driven rain is relentless from November. There, a covered slot keeps the deck gear and the cockpit dry enough that spring recommissioning is a morning rather than a weekend. I still go open air, but I understand the people who do not.
Choosing a yard: travel-lift, access and the DIY question
Not all yards can take your boat, and the constraint is usually the travel-lift. A yard with a 30-tonne lift handles most cruising boats up to 13 or 14 metres, but a heavy long-keeler or a catamaran can exceed the beam or weight a smaller hoist allows. Confirm the lift capacity and the maximum beam before you book, not when you arrive on the slip.
The second question that decides your winter is whether the yard lets you do your own work. French environmental rules on antifoul dust and washdown water have tightened, and some yards now restrict or ban owner DIY sanding and antifouling on the hardstanding, requiring you to use their staff or a covered work bay. That single policy can double your winter bill, because labour at around 60 euros an hour adds up fast on a hull. I always ask, in the same email as the tariff request: can I antifoul my own boat here, and are there restrictions on sanding?
A third factor foreigners undervalue: access out of season. A yard that locks the gate at 5pm and closes weekends is no use if you fly in for a long weekend to fit a new seacock. The yards used to liveaboards and long-distance owners keep flexible access, and that is worth a small premium.
A note on the spring relaunch
The winter ashore does not end when you pay the storage bill. Recommissioning eats a day or two: refitting the log impeller, checking seacocks, reconnecting and testing the engine cooling, antifouling the saildrive or prop, and a careful look at every through-hull before she goes back in. Build this time into your plan rather than treating launch day as the finish line. I lost a weekend one April to a seized seacock I should have freed in March, with the boat sitting in the lift slings while I improvised.
Book earlier than you think
The single biggest mistake foreign owners make is treating the haul-out as a phone call you make in September. The good yards, especially those with a travel-lift big enough for boats over 12 metres, fill their winter slots through the summer. By October the convenient yard near your home port may be full, and you are driving to lift out somewhere inconvenient.
I book my October slot in June. If your French is shaky, email rather than phone, ask for the tariff sheet in writing, and confirm in your booking exactly what the price includes: storage rate, lift both ways, wash, and whether you can do your own work on the hardstanding (some yards restrict DIY antifoul for environmental reasons).
What I would tell a first-timer
Read the tariff line by line and add it up before you commit. Assume the headline storage figure is a third to half of the real total. Book by midsummer for an autumn lift. And if you have never inspected your own hull on the hard, a winter ashore is the perfect moment to learn, using the hull inspection points as your walk-round checklist while she sits in the cradle.
A winter ashore in France is cheaper and kinder to the boat than most people expect. The hull dries out, the antifoul goes on clean, and a stored boat does not surge or chafe in a winter gale the way an afloat one does. It only stings if the bill surprises you, and now it will not.
